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FILM; Flaubert Does Hollywood -- Again

By ALAN RIDING

Published: January 13, 1991

LYONS-LA-FORET, France—
With a hearty laugh that shook his rounded shoulders and interrupted his assault on a plateful of smoked salmon, Claude Chabrol readily admitted that he has directed one or two of the worst films ever made. His only defense, he insisted, is that he never passes off bad films as good. "I have made films fully aware of their mediocrity," the 60-year-old French director boasted good-naturedly.

But for his 44th film, his version of Gustave Flaubert's classic, "Madame Bovary," no excuses are being prepared. He has long wanted to tackle the steamy 19th-century novel about a woman undone by lust and greed, and he spent five months writing the screenplay for the work that Flaubert himself took five years to complete. He has the actress of his choice in Isabelle Huppert, and he has found the right setting in this postcard-perfect Normandy village near Rouen.

Seven other directors -- including Jean Renoir in 1934 and Vincente Minnelli in 1949 -- have already made "Madame Bovary," but Mr. Chabrol does not seem intimidated. "No film has been made being totally faithful to Flaubert," he said over a four-course lunch on the set here recently. "I want this to be almost a film by Flaubert. To be faithful to Flaubert, you have to be faithful to 'Madame Bovary' because," he added, paraphrasing the author himself, "Madame Bovary is Flaubert and Flaubert is Madame Bovary."

In one sense, at least, his task is easy. Read today, "Madame Bovary" seems almost written for the screen, so Mr. Chabrol is using Flaubert's dialogue, following his detailed visual and sentimental descriptions and even echoing the peculiar sounds mentioned in the novel. Only the physical appearance of the main characters was purposefully left by Flaubert to the imagination of readers or, in this case, of the director.

In Isabelle Huppert, Mr. Chabrol believes he has found his ideal Emma Bovary. Twice before he has worked successfully with her and in each case -- "Violette" in 1978 and "Story of Women" a decade later -- she played Bovary-like characters whose dreams of escaping tedious lives lead them to disaster. "She's an actress who has the extraordinary gift of being able to express things without changing her face," said Mr. Chabrol. "It's very rare. It means she can remain poker-faced while expressing the most astonishing feelings."

Miss Huppert, a sort of French Meryl Streep in terms of the variety of roles she has played in a career spanning 45 movies, is all too aware that she has taken on what she calls "a monument." "One always thinks of Madame Bovary as a woman in search of romance and adventure," she noted, wrapped in a coat between scenes to fight off the early winter chill. "But the more I play the part, the more I see her as someone driven by a frenetic desire for everything -- for love, money, clothes, furniture -- but all on the same level, which is not at all romantic."

When "Madame Bovary" was first published in 1856, it was considered romantic, or at least explicitly sensual, enough to shock the authorities into charging Flaubert with "outrage to public morals and religion." His trial and subsequent acquittal then helped to turn the book into perhaps the most widely read French novel to date. And, in time, it became known less for its breathless love scenes than for its unrelenting attack on French bourgeois values and manners.

The story tells of a farmer's daughter, Emma Rouault, who dreams constantly of a life of romance, dreams that only grow when she marries a dull provincial doctor, Charles Bovary. In time, she finds passion with a local squire, Rodolphe Boulanger, and with a young lawyer, Leon Dupuis. Meanwhile, she begins borrowing heavily to keep up with the fashions of the day. Finally, abandoned by her lovers and blackmailed by her creditor, she takes arsenic and dies.

Flaubert himself embodied the 19th-century bourgeoisie that he so detested, and he recognized this by proclaiming, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Yet the novel is not a morality play. Flaubert watches and describes, but does not take sides. And that is how Mr. Chabrol is approaching the film. "Chabrol's talent is Flaubertian in that he has a clear and detailed idea of his vision of Madame Bovary," Miss Huppert explained. "He shoots in a very fluid way. He never improvises. He is very pure."

Before starting filming one recent afternoon, Mr. Chabrol seemed to know exactly what would happen. "There is little margin for choice," he said. "Today, I shoot two scenes in the dining room. I don't know exactly where I'll place my camera, but I know I'll shoot the two scenes in the dining room and I know that the people will say exactly what was written by Flaubert and they will move exactly the way indicated by Flaubert."

Once inside the tiny 18th-century house in Lyons-la-Foret that is doubling as the Bovary home in fictional Yonville, Mr. Chabrol installed himself in an adjacent room to watch the scene on television, beamed from a small video camera attached to the main 35-millimeter camera. There was no space left in the dining room, where a table was set for dinner and a steaming bowl of soup was being consumed by Miss Huppert as Emma and Jean-Francois Balmer as Charles. But, in any event, that is how Mr. Chabrol likes to direct: since everyone knew what had to be done, he sat back, puffed on a pipe and watched. Two takes usually sufficed; four was a maximum.

It all seemed terribly matter-of-fact, which is perhaps to be expected of a director who has made 43 movies and 20 or so television films. Much in the same way, unmoved by the praise and criticism that are variously heaped on his films, he views directing as a job that has its good days and bad. "I have chosen a way of working that is: when I can't do what I want to do, I do what I don't want to do," he said, by way of explaining numerous television potboilers and what he called "four or five films that are perhaps undignified."

But, yes, he conceded, he has had his ups and downs, not only with producers, but also with critics and audiences. He began with a bang with "Le Beau Serge" in 1958 and "The Cousins" in 1959, which earned him a place among France's New Wave directors. But bad times followed until the late 1960's, when he made a series of highly acclaimed films, among them "La Femme Infidele," "Le Boucher" and "Just Before Nightfall." From then on he made at least one film each year, but "Violette," "Inspecteur Lavardin" (1986) and "Story of Women" stood out. "Madame Bovary" is scheduled for release in France this spring and in the United States in the fall.

In a sense, Mr. Chabrol is still better known than any of his movies. "That allows me to make more films than someone who is not known or who has made one successful film," he said. "I make lots of films. It's a bit like, say, Georges Simenon. He is a well-known writer, but who can name the titles of his books? I don't have large audiences. I'm more like a newspaper. I have my subscribers." He took a deep breath and burst out laughing. "Of course, the ideal thing is for people to say, you must see this magnificent film by the magnificent Chabrol. It can happen, you know, it can happen."

"Madame Bovary," though, is clearly special to him. "It's because I saw Isabelle that I decided to make it," he said of Miss Huppert. "I've wanted to do it for a long time, but I never dared because I had such respect for Flaubert's work. But I think one can find a way between not being paralyzed by respect and not betraying the work." The solution, he said, was to make the film that Flaubert would have made "if he had worked with a camera instead of a pen."

In the process, he became even more fascinated with the character of Emma, "this peasant girl who thought she was something else." She was stupid, he concluded, but the men surrounding her were both stupid and cruel. "Madame Bovary reveals glimmers of intelligence, moments that she is aware of her state, or her mediocrity, and that is moving," Mr. Chabrol said. "That's why Flaubert adores her. She is aware of the extraordinary mediocrity of her universe and of herself and she looks for ways to escape them."

The men that surround her, then, become the mirrors of both her mediocrity and her dreams. And in the end, Rodolphe Boulanger, played by Christophe Malavoy, and Leon Dupuis, played by Lucas Belvaux, fail her as lovers as much as Charles Bovary does as her husband. But one other man, Monsieur Homais, the Voltaire-spouting local pharmacist played by Jean Yanne, is also central to the drama as the personification of bourgeois pomposity. And, as much as the wooded hills that surround Lyons-la-Foret, he provides the context for the novel.

Indeed, one might almost be forgiven for thinking that Flaubert wrote the book-of-the-movie, so well does its plot and setting fit into the tradition of French film making. Mr. Chabrol himself remains puzzled why a novel with "such a French spiritual tone, mental process and form" should have become an international favorite. But that only adds to the challenge of filming it.

"It's the classic French psychological novel," he said, "where Flaubert had succeeded and others have failed. That's why I feel so responsible. I can fail a little, but not too much."

Photo: Jean-Francois Balmer, left, with Claude Chabrol on the set of "Madame Bovary"--substituting camera for Flaubert's pen (Jacques Prayer/Gamma); Isabelle Huppert as Emma Bovary and Lucas Belvaux as one of her lovers in the new French production (Jacques Prayer/Gamma Liaison) (Jacques Prayer/Gamma Liaison) (pg. 20); Jennifer Jones played Flaubert's heroine in Vincente Minnelli's 1949 version of the 1856 novel. (pg. 21)